Area between the Foundling and Harrison estates: Church land

Grey areas: fragmented ownership and haphazard development; already built up by 1800

About the Battle Bridge Estate

The Battle Bridge field was originally a field to the west and east of Gray’s Inn Road, sharing its name with the name usually applied to this part of London prior to the erection here of the memorial to King George IV in 1830, when the area became known as Kings Cross instead (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The development of the New Road (Euston Road) in the middle of the eighteenth century cut across the 18-acre part of the field west of Gray’s Inn Road, leaving most of it south of the new road (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

This land was owned by William Brock in 1800 and continued to be used for gardens and meadows until the early 1820s, when it was purchased by Thomas Dunstan, William Robinson, and William Flanders (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The entire site they purchased was 16½ acres, 15¼ of them south of Euston Road but also including part of the north side of the road around what later became St Pancras station, in the north-east corner of Bloomsbury (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Dunstan, Robinson, and Flanders subsequently applied for an Act of Parliament to develop the land, in 1824, at the same time as the neighbouring Skinners’, Cromer, and Harrison estates were being developed, although development of the Battle Bridge estate proceeded more slowly and was not completed until the 1840s (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

Development was delayed in part by the failure of the ambitious Panarmion scheme, a large entertainment complex with a theatre, galleries, and reading rooms as well as gardens and pleasure grounds, opened in 1830 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

This would ultimately have filled a large area bordered by Argyle Street, Liverpool Street, and Derby Street but which closed after two years in 1832 and was demolished, without ever having all been built (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The subsequent residential development was not particularly high-class: “Although the houses which they built have the charm inherent in diminutive dwellings of the early 19th century, with picturesque balconies and fanlights, the Battle Bridge area was never ‘highly respectable’ in the social sense of the day” (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952)

The main part of the estate, comprising Liverpool Street, Manchester Street, Derby Street, and Belgrave Street, was reported to be healthy in 1842 (J. Worrell, 28 October 1842, Appendix to Fifth Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1843)

This was in marked contrast to the neighbouring Lucas estate to the south, the courts at the northern end of the Foundling estate, and the other part of the original Battle Bridge field to the east of Gray’s Inn Road, which had the highest death rate of the local areas (J. Worrell, 28 October 1842, Appendix to Fifth Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1843)

However, the whole area was reported to be overcrowded and squalid in 1848 (Survey of London, vol. 24, 1952), and the coming of the railways in the latter half of the century, with the opening of the stations at Kings Cross and St Pancras, rendered it particularly vulnerable to the conversion of its houses into lodging-houses and cheap hotels, many of which rapidly acquired a dubious reputation which continued well into the twentieth century

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Liverpool Street

Also known as Birkenhead Street

Not to be confused with the much more famous Liverpool Street in east London, site of a railway terminus

It is in the north-east corner of Bloomsbury, running south from Euston Road at its extreme eastern end

It was developed by W. Forrester Bray from 1825 (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)

It was renamed after a place near Liverpool, possibly to avoid confusion with the better-known street and railway terminus

King’s Cross Wesleyan Chapel opened opposite Derby Street in 1825 (on the site now occupied by Methodist Chaplaincy House) (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)

No. 11 (demolished; site now occupied by Riverfleet flats) was the site office of the Panarmion Company in the 1820s

No. 61 was the site of a theatre opened in 1830 as part of the Panarmion scheme and later used as the Royal Clarence and Cabinet Theatre (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)

The Royal Entrance to the Royal London Bazaar was located in the southern part of the street, around the site of the modern Riverfleet flats (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998); it comprised no. 12 Liverpool Street, a spacious mansion associated with the Bazaar (David Hayes, ‘ “Without Parallel in the Known World”: The Chequered Past of 277 Gray’s Inn Road’, Camden History Review, vol. 25, 2001)

King’s Cross Wesleyan Chapel was enlarged in 1865–1866, and a mission hall was built facing Chesterfield Street (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)

By the late nineteenth century, its houses had become hotels often used by prostitutes (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)

The Female Preventive and Reformatory Institute & Midnight Meeting Movement was based here by 1907

It was renamed Birkenhead Street in 1938 (David Hayes, East of Bloomsbury, 1998)